‘Eureka!’ California stinks!

I write this with a heavy heart, under duress, and with a longing for what once was, in my home state…

“The land of milk and honey” has curdled and soured.

“The Golden State” has lost its sheen and is now irreversibly tarnished.

“The Grape State” withered on the vine.

“The El Dorado State” is bankrupt.

And the “California — Find Yourself Here” state is now saying to it’s taxpayers and working residents, “go back whence you came.”

Welcome to California — now go home

The message is clear. All it takes to confirm this is a little travel outside of California.

Whenever I travel, folks kindly ask, “Where y’all from?” When “California” is the answer, two things happen: either they recoil in disgust, or they say, “Ah, that’s too bad.”

I am a native Californian, but I also was a Navy brat as a young child, and had the distinct privilege of traveling through nearly every state, and living in a few other states for short durations. But I grew up in and still live in Sacramento, CA.

This past year I’ve traveled to several times to other states. Each time, I’ve been among groups of people from all over the country. And each time, they ask, “What the hell is going on in California?”

The ensuing discussions always cover state and local politics, thanks to dominant San Francisco and Los Angeles politics. And people always ask about our Congress-made water crisis in the Central Valley. It seems that everyone in the country knows about the political Central Valley drought and agricultural devastation, and ask why it hasn’t been fixed.

California has become an embarrassment, but that’s not all. Under Democratic policies and the strong arm of Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez, California stinks. Eureka! We’re broke!

Welcome to California

Upon arriving home from Florida last week, I was welcomed with the news that “California has the worst credit rating of any state now and the nation’s worst credit rating record over the past 11 years, according to a new nationwide compilation by the Pew Center on the States,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “The states with the lowest grades typically have trouble keeping their spending in line with their tax revenues,” Pew’s Stephen C. Fehr writes in an explanation of the research.

Stockton, Mammoth Lakes and now San Bernardino have filed bankruptcy. As more cities finally realize they cannot pay their preposterous pensions, expect to see more of them file suit.

Run From California

California’s residents already know that the state is a house of cards. Since just 2000, 1.5 million people have left the state for greener pastures and normal political theaters. In the last two decades, more than 4 million Californians have moved elsewhere–and it’s mostly young families leaving.

Jerry’s redux

Apparently a legacy is of the utmost importance to politicians, since Brown wasn’t content with the damage he inflicted on California the first two terms as governor. Apparently dissatisfied with creating the I-5 bottleneck only five minutes after the interstate highway was finished, Brown’s redux has even more disastrous political policies: High-Speed Rail, green buildings, green cars, green air, tax increases, higher state spending and plush union contracts — it’s so Brown.

“Where [Brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension, Joel Kotkin commented in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. “When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We’re still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we’ve got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?”

Brown’s anti-traditional energy policies could be the unwinding of the state, if high-speed rail doesn’t finish us off first. We should be beefing up our oil drilling and hydroelectric dams, not shutting them down. And, as Kotkin points out, “25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the vast Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits.”

Under Brown’s leadership (a term I use very loosely), California’s spending is up, not down. To meet this spending increase, Brown has authored a classic class-envy, tax-the-rich ballot initiative, increasing the income taxes on those who make $250,000 or more.

“This newest concoction known as “Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012,” according to its website, hits the “highest earners” with a 3% income tax increase, and includes smaller increases on those earning between $250,000 and $1 million. Already, the notion that this is strictly a ‘Millionaire’s Tax’ is shattered. And despite rhetoric that ‘the middle class and poor are not impacted,’ the proposal still raises the sales tax by a quarter cent to 7.75%. It therefore increases a tax that will be felt by literally all Californians.

“No matter the merits of raising taxes as a means of closing California’s $9.2 billion deficit, the truth about the nature of the plan deserves to be known. Californian’s should not be told something is only a millionaire’s tax when in actuality it is far more, and will impact everyone. Jerry Brown’s latest push will hit far more than just those earning more than $1 million. It will be felt by every Californian at every cash register across the state.”

As Brown famously explained recently when asked how $250,000 is a millionaire’s tax, he said, “Anybody who makes $250,000 becomes a millionaire very quickly if you save it. You just need four years,” Brown said. “It is a millionaires tax. It taxes millionaires, right?”

In the 30’s, with the midwest in a huge drought and their crops burning up and dying, many people, my family included, loaded up their trucks and their lives and headed to California.
This summer, with the midwest in a huge drought and the crops burning up, people in Kalifornia are loading up their trucks AND HEADING THE OTHER WAY, back to the burning midwest. Because even how bad it is in Kansas, it is much better than in Kalifornia.
Hondo…..

Quite simple: Our state politicians, led by the democrats, is channeling Jim Jones. State & local employee unions sweetened their Kool-Aid but they ran out of sugar and now the rest of use have to drink unsweetened Kool-Aid.

The proverbial guns to our heads is the taxes, fees, threats of bankruptcy, etc., governor moonbeam and his hench-“persons” (have to be PC)are pointing at us.

The only people with the means to escape are the rich and those with the good sense to flee before the shooting starts.

Jerry Brown insane? Nahhhh…!! His brain is just fried from all the drugs he did in the 60s. Due to age, most of his brain is an inert gelatinous mass and the few working brain cells he has left is still super-saturated with LSD, peyote, hashish, Marijuana, Quaalude’s, speed, cocaine, toad venom, skunk piss and Robitussin.

His perception of reality is distorted, phase-shifted and completely out of whack with the reality the rest of us live in.

That’s an impressive list of drugs BobA – sounds like you’re an expert. I’m not a Jerry Brown fan either, but Republicans are definitely not the answer. Spending under Bush was ridiculous. Thanks for the never ending war jackasses!

Companies don’t create jobs for the sake of creating jobs. Would you rather the government create jobs? And to make it fair, should janitors make they same pay as, say, doctors? Shouldn’t professional athletes get paid the same as everyone else? Should the government do away with corporations altogether and run businesses?

I have been traveling through my search engine. Once lived in Texas for 6 years, the whole time I was there I longed for my Sierra Nevada and my “real coast”-the Pacific Ocean. My search engine has made it possible to find homes in Dallas , (Plano), Houston (kingwood) and Austin Tx. I have put off the move for a couple of years now, because my husband was ill and then he died. I am a SoCal Gal and love Huntington Beach-the body surfing, I love the dry climate, I love to ski the snow covered slops, etc etc etc.
I never thought I would say that I am afraid of what our Legistlature is doing to us. Heavely weighted with the left thinking and acting and spending of that left is driving me out of California. It is as though I have lost hope. I talk to real estate people all over Texas and most are transplanted Californians. I call 800 numbers to make purchases and I speak with Calfornia transplants/expatriots of Ca. Texas is the USA, freedom abounds, joy is paletable, hope and the I can do it rings out, calls out and sings a song of welcome. No income tax, the communities pay taxes that take care of their schools and other. Homes, OMG homes that are build without union labor, road and hiways build without Union labor, so the homes with deep moulding and lots of square footage for a house that would cost more than double here in Ca. small business run out of a home doesn’t face the same fees that I would have to pay her e in my town, if I stay. FM1960 (Farm to Market 1960) is lined every morning with entrapaneurs who have their load of fresh shrimp iced down in large coolers selling their shrimp and fish and then their fresh cray fish in season, for a song and a dance price. No health dept out there slapping charges on anyone. I have purchased from them and neither my family have ever been sick from it, and all my neighbors and friends never had an incident of food poisoning. TEXAS is the land of the free. I hope that the Feds don’t see this writing, because they will surely go to screw up a find outdoor fish and fruit market with their Federal laws and regulations. Deep in the heart of Texas I think I belong, and hope to return there soon.
I have prayed for my California and prayed hard and pleaded for her deliverance from the politicians who buys votes with my income through their debt, but they don’t pay the debt, they spend more for more votes. The 9th circut works in tadum with the left to make null and void majority votes by Ca voters. OMG before my husband died he told me that he didn’t care anymore, and he would say I am thankful I won’t be here to see the ruin that is to come.
A state without teachers unions, omg no more Texas in my rear view mirror, it will have to be California I will see and I will cry for the good memories I lived body surfing the big waves of Huntington Beach side by side with the seals. Going forward with hope, and knowing that Texans don’t know strangers, unless you are a obscene speaking, finger flipping cussing using his care a an intimidation on the roads. And, give me land lots of land unneath the clear blue skies of Texas and I will plant a yellow rose bush.

Ted, the second greatest trickle-down revenue increases at the federal level occurred under President Reagan, those economic plans were put together by Arthur Laffer, who also advised Gov. Jerry Brown in his bid for the White House, as discussed in this City Journal article, Flatten California!-Arthur B. Laffer-Spring 2012, http://bit.ly/NxxnVI
in which Mr. Laffer proposes a way to fix California’s perpetual budget problems. Good reading!

If everyone was paid the same sallary then those that wanted to become Doctors and Lawyers would do so because they want to help people rather than greedily lining their pockets. Socialism is what so many fear but in the end Socialism is where we’ll end up. It’s evolution in play. “Imagine all the people living life in peace” :o)

As a lifetime rez of Cal. I’m done. My wife and I are going Viking on this place. I will “get on board” and take everything I can. Liberalism/ socialism has done this to my beautiful home. Since the voters vote to rob me at every step and burden my children with billions in future bond costs we have no choice but to become transient citizens from out of state. We’ll chase little trout and be with more likeminded people in the in the rockies in the summer and surf the beautiful winters with the welfare statists when the Rockies chase us out. Only to return in the spring. I can’t fight the socialists from here, my vote doesn’t count for anything. I JUST PAY AND PAY. My saddest and happiest day will be when is see in my rearview window, “Welcome to California”.